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Anakwanar Sek
Anakwanar Sek was a formidable and notorious Magister of the Forces of Chaos who served under both Archon Nadzybar and Archon Urlock Gaur during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. Anakwanar Sek was responsible for the creation of the elite Chaotic warband known as the Sons of Sek. History Anakwanar Sek was perhaps the most gifted and brilliant of all the warlords of the Forces of Chaos within the Sabbat Worlds Sector. He specialised in the use of psychological warfare. Sek possessed a thorough understanding of the importance of exploiting the foe's intellectual weaknesses in battle, and had a particular fascination with the use of words as weapons. Unlike many of his fellow Magisters, Sek demonstrated an evil finesse and guile in his overall strategy rather than the pursuit of sheer bloody mayhem. He would routinely force target worlds into submission simply by playing a few, carefully chosen broadcasts intended to evoke absolute terror in civilian populations instead of launching a protracted fleet bombardment and planetary assault that would have taken weeks. Magister Sek wanted the Imperial worlds to know that their destruction was rapidly approaching. He wanted to have his chosen targets quaking with a fear that made them ripe for invasion and corruption by Chaos. Sek served as Magister to Archon Nadzybar at the outset of hostilities during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. He fought in multiple campaigns throughout this long and brutal campaign, serving Nadzybar faithfully. After the death of the Archon on Balhaut in 764.M41, Sek continued to harass and harangue the Imperial forces whilst they pushed coreward into the Cabal System. Sek's forces not only provided fierce resistance for the Imperials but also began to launch hostile counter-strikes. Broken in retreat, the Archenemy forces had been riven by a succession struggle as the various Chaos factions warred to elect a new Archon of the Chaos host. Many of the notorious warlords of the Chaotic forces known as Magisters had been in contention to become the new Archon, including Nokad the Blighted, Sholen Skara, Qux of the Eyeless, Heritor Asphodel, and Enok Innokenti. Rumour had it that more of the Chaotic forces troops were killed in an internecine war of succession than had been lost to the Crusade armada. Of all the contenders, Nokad had the charisma, Asphodel the temperament, and Qux the sheer weight of loyal servants. But Anakwanar Sek should have been the obvious choice. No other Magister was quite so brilliant a battlefield tactician. Sek's command of tactics and his capacity to inspire his troops was peerless. But Gaur, an obscure warlord from the fringes of the Sabbat Worlds, became the new Archon, simply because he possessed the one thing that all the other Magisters lacked, even Sek. The other Magisters commanded vast legions of zealous cultists and insane Chaos worshippers. But Urlock Gaur commanded a refined, trained and disciplined military host known as the Blood Pact. They were sworn to him, utterly loyal, their bodies ritually scarred by the serrated edges of Gaur's own armour. They had discipline, armour, tactical ability and great combat skill. They were, in fact, an army, not a gibbering host of fanatics like most of the other Chaos warbands in the Sabbat Worlds. The Blood Pact's troops could meet with and defeat the Astra Militarum on its own terms. They were a force the Imperium had to reckon with, and they secured Gaur the rank of Archon. They might even have had the skill to drive Warmaster Macaroth's Crusade out of the Sabbat Worlds. That is what Sek coveted more than anything else, the means to annihilate the Imperial invaders and garner all the glory for himself. By 771.M41, Urlock Gaur had been elected as the new Archon, rising from within the ranks of the Forces of Chaos to lead the defence of the Sabbat Worlds. But still Sek wanted, yearned and longed to be named Archon. He reviled the Gaur for his success. He intended to bide his time, playing the part of a loyal Magister to the most high Archon. But he prized that rank as his own for he felt that he alone truly deserved it. He believed himself to be a better leader than the Gaur. Yet as the Archon withdrew into the Carcaradon Cluster to the Fortress World of Morlond to mass his forces for a large-scale counter attack, he left his most capable Magisters, including Anakwanar Sek, to continue prosecuting their attack on the Crusade's coreward flank. In the latter months of 773.M41, Magisters Sek and Enok Innokenti launched a two-pronged flank attack into the Khan Group that would be both murderous and catastrophic for the Crusade forces. Their goal was simple -- to bisect the Crusade force and decapitate it. By the end of 773.M41, these two Magisters had all but halted the Imperial thrust into the Cabal Systems, slicing across the Imperial zone of occupation and successfully bisecting the Khan Group. The Imperial losses -- both military and civilian -- were horrendous. Three worlds were savaged to near-extinction, and on another three their ecosystems were permanently altered, creating nuclear winters. This does not even take into account the number of people consumed by the penalty camps and murder centres established within the occupation zones of the Chaotic forces. During this phase of the Crusade many worlds along the Chaotic line of advance found themselves fighting alone. Only sheer happenstance combined with successful unilateral actions eventually saved the Imperial advance, rather than the pursuit of any overall, coordinated strategy. At the turn of 775.M41, the greatest threat to the security of the Imperial forces came from their flank, from the forces of Magister Anakwanar Sek. This new Second Front of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade found itself pushed beyond the point of endurance by Sek's forces. In order to place himself in a comparable position to challenge Urlock Gaur's preeminence as Archon and control over the Forces of Chaos within the sector, Sek had decided to raise an elite fighting force of his own. Called the Sons of Sek, this elite cadre of Chaos warriors represented the most formidable challenge to the Gaur. Sek began the process of raising his army upon the Agri-World of Gereon. The Sons of Sek were trained under the supervision of the traitorous former Lord General Noches Sturm, a disgraced commanding officer of the 50th Royal Volpone Imperial Guard Regiment. Under his expert guidance, the Sons of Sek were formed using the same tactical structure as the Imperial Guard and forged into an elite fighting force that soon proved to be a relentless and implacable foe of the Imperium. Word of this reached the Crusade force, and some Imperial tacticians speculated that the Crusade might help itself by provoking a civil war between the Gaur and Sek, although the last thing the Imperial forces wanted was for Sek to emerge victorious as the new Archon. Sources *''Double Eagle'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett, Ch. 11 *''Necropolis'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett *''Traitor General'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett *''Sabbat Worlds Crusade'' (Background Book) by Dan Abnett, pp. 18, 66, 77, 93 es:Anakwanar Sek Category:A Category:S Category:Chaos Category:Chaos Characters Category:Characters Category:Sabbat Worlds Crusade Category:Chaos Cults